Distribution of imagery (including, e.g., graphics and video) and audio on the Internet is quick and simple. While advantageous in most respects, this ease of distribution makes it difficult for proprietors of such materials to track the uses to which their audio/imagery/graphics/video are put. It also allows such properties to be copied illicitly, in violation of the proprietors' copyrights.
The disclosure presents a digital watermarking system that seeks to redress these drawbacks by monitoring Internet dissemination of various properties, and reporting the results back to their proprietors. If an unauthorized copy of a work is detected, appropriate steps can be taken to remove the copy, or compensate the proprietor accordingly.
In one implementation of the inventive watermarking methods, a monitoring system downloads various image files (including video or graphic files) or audio files over the Internet, and identifies some as having embedded digital watermark data. The system decodes such watermark data and, from the decoded data, determines the proprietor of each file. The proprietors are then alerted to the results of the monitoring operation, sometimes informing them about otherwise unknown distribution of their image/audio properties.
In some embodiments, the proprietorship is determined by reference to a registry database, in which a watermarked identification code is associated with textual information identifying the proprietor of a work.
In some embodiments, various types of screening operations can be applied to the downloaded files to identify those most likely to contain embedded watermark data, so that complete watermark detection operations are performed only on a subset of the downloaded files.
The foregoing and other features and advantages will be more readily apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.